Crusader Kings II: Sons of Abraham

The most popular thing that this expansion did was expand flavor for Christianity such as giving you more control over the pope and and allowing you to send meddlesome children and others to be monks, taking away several threats. But it also expands other areas as well, such as allowing you to play as a Jewish character and giving reformed pagans holy orders, which is a nice addition. So regardless of who you like to play as or how you play, this expansion can add more flavor.

CK2: SoA doesn’t revolutionize the game, but it adds some nice features that accelerate player character development and allows you to delve into internal religious politics, if you so desire. Pilgrimage is probably the most regularly impactful of the new additions. The base game has scant and infrequent opportunities for your character to gain “good” leadership traits. Sending your character out on a one-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage offers the opportunity to pick up a few good traits through plot choice events, albeit tempered with the chance of catching pneumonia. It’s a welcome addition in a world that sometimes lacks for role-playing. More ballyhooed, but generally less important is the papal election/favor feature. For vanilla catholics in the base game, your interest in the pope is generally limited to keeping relations civil enough with him so that he doesn’t excommunicate you or grant invasion CBs to your enemies. With SoA, stacking relationship bonuses may be worthwhile, because you can barter “surplus” opinion for favors. The biggest positive relationship modifier is if the pope was once one of your former bishops whom you helped get appointed a cardinal. While a side diversion if you’ve the coin, I’ve found papal favor to still be a minor and peripheral concern in the grand scheme and can generally be ignored as background notifications. Otherwise, most of other features are quite minor unless you’re interested in playing as a Jewish ruler in which case there are special events tied to re-establishing Israel. Overall, I would say Sons of Abraham is an interesting but not really an essential DLC.

Another solid expansion from the folks at Paradox. This DLC deals with adding quite a bit of flavour to Christianity, the namesake of Crusader Kings 2. These mechanics are a welcome addition to the game. Curia and papal intrigue mean that your character can delve into the religious part of the game as a Christian now! The decision to expand on the regular heresies is also nice and it adds more depth to anyone who happens to become one. Can't wait to finish a game as an Iconoclast or a Cathar. There's also been some flavour additions to Muslims (such as the ability to choose which school/ideology to back). And who can forget the ability to play as a Jewish character? Can't forget that. All in all, fun stuff.